St Paul on the Absence and Presence of Jesus The Present and Absent Lord 2019 TRINITY LECTURE 2 – 30 JULY 2019 MARKUS BOCKMUEHL, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Introduction Lecture 1: despite a number of seemingly straightforward Pauline affirmations about the nearness of Jesus, it has not proved self- evident how to articulate this in relation to themes like participation and union with Christ on the one hand, and absence on the other. Lecture 2: Modes of Presence and Absence. How does Paul’s faith relate to themes of Union with Christ, Visions of Jesus, and the question of his bodily absence?
Participation and Union with Christ – A Mode of Presence? Paul’s frequent use of language of union and fellowship with Christ seems the strongest indication of a Jesus who is personally present to believers. Christ is the constant source of personal and emotional strength for Paul as apostle and believer. The same is true of Paul’s churches. Paul nowhere offers a systematic account of the presence of Jesus. ‘In Christ’ (ἐν Χριστῷ) language may suggest Christ is locatively present. However, Paul’s ‘in Christ’ language famously oscillates between spatial, personal and modal senses.
“ Maranatha !” ‘Maran atha ’ – an Aramaic phrase exclaimed by Paul in 1 Cor. 16.22. Most modern commentaries treat the phrase as the worshipping community’s appeal, meaning ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ ( marana tha ). However, this is not how the term maranatha was understood in antiquity. Ancient translations including the Latin Vulgate agree with the consistent patristic interpretation of the phrase as maran(a) atha ‘Our Lord has come’ or ‘Our Lord is here.’ Maranatha is a phrase affirming the authorizing presence of Jesus to the church in a juridical act of excommunication. Note “ anathema maranatha ” (16.22). Analogous to the affirmation of Jesus’ presence in the exercise of church discipline in Matt. 18.
The Spirit: Substitute for Jesus, Person Without Personality? Paul’s account of the Holy Spirit is largely functionally synonymous for the presence of Jesus. James Dunn and others have suggested that Paul sublimates the presence of Jesus in the experience of the Spirit, with close analogies between Christ and the Spirit in Rom. 8 and 2 Cor. 3. This arguably submerges Jesus’ personality into ‘God’s empowering presence.’ James Dunn: ‘Jesus became the personality of the Spirit’ and ‘One cannot experience Christ except as Spirit.’ James D. G. Dunn
The Spirit: Substitute for Jesus, Person Without Personality? Notion of a Pauline ‘Spirit Christology’ opposed by scholars like Gordon Fee, Mehrdad Fatehi, and Wesley Hill. God, Jesus, and Spirit are characterized by dynamic identification without any of them being reducible to any other. (Cf. perichoresis )
Seeing Jesus: Then and Now Paul only uses verbs of seeing sparingly and only in the past or future tense . ‘ Seeing the Lord’ belongs either to the apostolic past (1 Cor. 9.1; cf. Acts 9.27) or to the future (1 Cor. 13.13) Experienced presence of the risen Jesus in early Christianity was to some extent visionary . Christopher Rowland: early Christianity was a visionary movement. Paul also claims to experience the personal presence of Jesus in ‘visions’ (2 Cor. 12.1) and in direct personal words of comfort (12.9). In the New Testament, visions of Christ are distinctively central to the Paul of the letters and the Book of Acts. Paul’s vision of the exalted Christ
Vision and Transformation A number of scholars recently argued that the ecstatic visionary experiences of the exalted Christ shaped Paul’s Christology in important ways. Andrew Chester: ‘Paul knows and can make known Christ as embodying the divine glory... and divine image... because they are precisely what he has seen in his vision.’
Christ the Present Jesus Paul ’s reserve about the substance of his mystical experiences of Jesus. He attributes surprisingly few doctrinal affirmations to them. Visionary experiences corroborate what Paul already knows of Jesus. Even in his visionary conversion experience, the Jesus who calls him is the same as the one he previously persecuted: ‘ Saul, Saul: why do you persecute me?’ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting’ (Acts 9.7; 22.7 -8; 26.14). Paul does not differentiate between the ‘Jesus’ and the ‘Christ’ who ‘died and rose again’ (e.g. Rom. 14.9; 1 Cor. 15.3 -5; 1 Thess. 2.14). just as it is ‘Jesus’ and ‘the Lord’ whose coming Christian await (e.g. 1 Thess. 2.10; 4.14-17)
Visionary Generation of Christology? Paul’s centrally dogmatic Christological passage hint at a personal continuity between the personality of the one who ‘loved and gave himself for me’ and the one who now ‘lives in me’ (Gal. 2.20). Phil. 2.6-11: the one who humbled himself and died on the cross is the very same who now bears the name above every name. 2 Cor: the one who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor’ (2 Cor. 8.9) is the one who in a visionary encounter assures Paul ‘My grace is sufficient for you’ (2 Cor. 12.9) Each of these modes of presence, the earthly and the heavenly, is required to make sense of the other. Jesus is Christ the Lord, but as importantly, Christ the Lord is Jesus.
Visionary Generation of Christology? What Paul encounters in his vision is the dynamic person of Jesus Christ rather than innovative conceptions of Christology. Importantly, this experience of the presence of Jesus only achieves doctrinal articulation in dialogue with scripture, with ecclesial tradition, and with Paul’s partners and opponents. Significantly, the key Christological texts all demonstrate that Paul’s doctrine of the Jesus who was present to him did not as such derive from visions – indeed none of these passages refer to any experience or vision.
The Bodily Absence “You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12.27). This seems to require the presence of Christ in the gathering of the ekklesia . Peter Orr highlights the lack of scholarship engaging with the question of Christ’s bodily absence. Presence and absence of Christ stand in a strongly contrasting, dialectical relationship. 2 Cor. 12: Reference to visionary encounters with Jesus followed by protracted silence of seemingly unanswered prayer.
The Bodily Absence Phil. 1: two poles experienced simultaneously. The same Christ ‘in’ whom all Christians exist and who is their life (1.1, 21) is also the one for whom Paul in the same chapter longs to ‘weigh anchor’ in order to be with him (1.23). Rom. 8: the same Christ who is ‘in you’ is simultaneously at the right hand of God (8.9-10, 34). Jesus at once present in his body and bodily absent. Jesus qua Jesus who is bodily absent and enthroned in heaven . This same Jesus whom Paul repeatedly encounters in visions.
Conclusion Personal presence of Jesus is to an extent a matter of his earthly mission and future return. This bodily reality of incarnation and Parousia is what necessitates the possibility of Jesus’ absence in the present, and how Paul can long to be with him. Continuing presence of Jesus until the Parousia is for Paul mediated in part through the Holy Spirit, who is closely associated with Jesus. However, the Holy Spirit does not exhaust the register of Jesus’ personal presence. Some grace believers may occasionally encounter Jesus in visionary experiences. Lecture 3: Paul locates the personal encounter with Jesus not in individual experience but in the life of his people, his body, gathered for worship.
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